Prophecy
This is difficult to define, so I will try to explain what it is not. It is not the telling of the future. HOWEVER a prophecy can give fore-sight into the future. But just becuase it can happen does not make it a requirement. These are ofcourse the more 'famous' types of Prophecy, and thus many people make the mistake of linking the two inextricably. Prophecy is meant to be the divine word of God being spoken out, hence in the Nicean creed "We believe.... .... in the Holy Spirit. the Lord, the Giver of Life.... He has spoken through the Prophets. " To try and explain the differences between 'future telling' and other types, I will attempt to give example cases.. for example a prophet may claim to have a word for someone along the lines of "..there is no need to worry, in X months time you will be offered a job..". This is clearly prophecy in the standard sence, as the Prophet is just telling them what the future will hold. However if a prophet says to person A "you are doing X and Y with B, and not telling C, if you continue to do this then Z will happen" then this is also a valid form of prophecy. Note in the second example, the prophet is using divine revelation from God to explain to the person what they have been doing with B. This is not for A's benifit, but to prove that they have knowledge from God (for only God could know about X say), and to explain to witnesses why Z is going to happen. This type of prophecy does not give a certainty, as the person A can repent and be saved. For example Jonah was sent to a city to tell them they will be destroyed if they do not turn to the Lord, however they then decided to turn to the Lord and were not destroyed. Prophecy of either kind can be encouraging or accusing. Prophecy can also be just imparting divinly inspired knowledge to people, although this is normally considered a 'lesser' form of prophecy. In the OT the Jews demanded signs from prophets to show that they were from God, as such in the story of Elijah burning an offering to God with fire from heaven whilst the prophets of Baal could not get there altar to ignite with praise alone, can be considered an example of prophecy by Elijah. In short then I can define: any action done by a Prophet, that can be attributed to God is prophecy. Unfortunatley this is not the end of the tale... NIV: Acts 2:17 In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. This is often interpreted to describe the current state of the church, with the Holy spirit moving through us. However to then define all young men as prophets seems overkill for the sake of preserving definition. Afterall if we are all meant to be prophets then why would paul list it as a seperate spiritual gift (in 1Cor12:29), rather than just saying we all have it? As such I shall define prophecy to be: any action (that can be attributed to God) perfomed by a believer, which is providing knowledge overwise unkown. Admitily by this definition Elijah was not prophecying when he decided to call fire down from heaven, but in order to include it I would be allowing prophesy to become some kind of catch-all definition for spiritual things that are otherwise not named. As with all spiritual gifts, it comes down to the problem of no one person having just one specific (can be put in a box) gift. Prophets have been known to heal, and perform miracles, yet paul lists these as different gifts. Old Testament Prophecies fulfilled by Jesus Following is a list of verses from the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible, Old Testament) that show Christian interpretations regarding messianic prophecies, supporting the claim that Jesus has been promised by God to be born as a human, and is the awaited Messiah: Criticisms Critics of Bible prophecy hold that the verses are often shorn of their original context, in which there is no obvious indication that they were actually predicting anything. Occasionally statistical arguments are made, involving the improbability of someone fulfilling all these prophesies: such arguments are heavily criticised because the list of prophesies was chosen on the basis of having been fulfilled. Most books of the Hebrew Bible were written hundreds of years, and some parts possibly thousands of years, before the birth of Jesus. Many of the verses above were not widely held to be "prophecies" until after the New Testament had been written. Others were thought to be prophecies, but not necessarily connected with the idea of a "messiah". Almost all non-Christians do not believe that these verses prove Jesus was the Messiah, (though many may not really care, and therefore don't believe through lack of interest) and many non-Christian scholars argue that Jesus' actions are just contrived to deliberately fit into the prophecies Christians believe describe Jesus in the Old Testament. See also *Isaiah 53 *Historicity of Jesus *Judaism and Christianity *Messianic Judaism *Second Coming Sources *Old and New Testaments of the Bible *Prophecies that only Jesus fulfilled *How Jesus fulfilled Old Testament prophecies External links *Prophecy in the news currently - Fulfillment of end time prophecy taking place now *a Christian explanation of several Messianic prophecies *Jewish refutations of the prophecies *JewsForJudaism.org *MessiahTruth.com *Lets Get Biblical *List of over 300 messianic prophecies Category:Holy Spirit Category:Prophecy